Innovation and the case for optimism

Global education is on the brink of true transformation and we have more reason for optimism than ever before.

Governments, companies and other organisations around the world are scrambling to embed a culture of innovation. Being ‘innovative by default’ and developing a ‘culture of innovation’ seem to be the must have phrases for the modern vision statement - and with good reason. I don’t believe it is a buzzword or just another global fad, even if it is already becoming something of a cliché. On the contrary, we are at a stage now where innovation is the key to survival, not just in education and business, but also for humankind.

What is Innovation?

“Innovation is the multi-stage process whereby organisations transform ideas into new/improved products, service or processes, in order to advance, compete and differentiate themselves successfully in their marketplace.” (Baregheh et al, 2009)

Contrary to most dictionary definitions, which tend to stress only the need for something ‘new’, in reality, innovations have to add value to be worthwhile. They must make a positive contribution to our lives, otherwise they will not gain traction and be scaled to the point of sustained normality. Innovations don’t have to involve new technologies, but they do have to make a positive difference.

Innovation in Education

“The United Arab Emirates Vision 2021 has education as its foundation, both explicitly and implicitly. Vision 2021 includes aspirations for citizenship, a spirit of entrepreneurship, enhanced educational attainment, and a knowledge-based economy driven by innovation, research, science and technology. The realisation of these aspirations requires a world-class education system, responsive to national needs and aligned to international standards.”

-          UAE School Inspection Framework for 2015/16

Arguably for the first time, we have a school inspection framework that explicitly recognises and values the need to teach our students to be innovative and for schools to model innovation in providing learners with authentic skills for life and work. I believe this is very good news for our children as it represents a real driver for positive curriculum and pedagogical innovation that will, ultimately, better prepare students for the future.

We must be very clear about the rationale and predicted outcomes whenever major changes are made to the education of our children. Our young learners only get once chance and we need to make it count. So, as the innovation drive inevitably begins to filter down into schools and their curriculum offerings, we should be certain about what we are trying to achieve - and why. 

I believe there are at least five key reasons why we need to innovate in our offering to students, whilst also empowering our young people to become innovators throughout their lives.

1.       The need for something more

Firstly, competition for places in higher education institutions, as well as positions with employers is more intense than ever and, faced with a flood of students who all have the same top grades in public examinations, companies, colleges and universities are looking for additional indicators of achievement. Authentic links with industry, internships, elective qualifications, MOOCs and the Maker Movement are becoming normal provision in today’s innovative schools. Such opportunities go beyond the Community, Action, Service (CAS) program in IB schools and Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) in the English curriculum. These programs undoubtedly add value to students’ prospects, but schools now recognise the need to provide an even greater range of authentic routes to educational development and enhancement of life skills.

The University of Kent in the UK has produced a list of skills that employers want, based on a number of surveys on the skills required by graduates undertaken by Microsoft, Target Jobs, the BBC, Prospects, NACE, AGR and other organisations:

1.  Verbal communication

2.  Teamwork

3.  Commercial Awareness

4.  Analysing & Investigating

5.  Initiative & self-motivation

6.  Drive

7.  Written communication

8.  Planning & organising

9.  Flexibility

10. Time management

11. Global skills (including appreciation of other cultures)

12. Negotiating & persuading

13. Numeracy

14. Computing skills

15. Self-awareness

16. Confidence / personal impact

17. Lifelong learning

18. Stress tolerance

19. Integrity

20. Independence

21. Professionalism

22. Action planning

23. Decision-making

24. Interpersonal sensitivity

25. Creativity

This certainly bears little correlation with traditional subject-based curricula offered in most schools today, which is why schools must continue to engage in innovative, hopefully transformative, curriculum design to provide students with a much broader and relevant range of skills, values and attributes.

The clear message from industry is that today’s students need outstanding examination results and a whole lot more.

2.       Every child really does matter

Choice within the curriculum is the key to providing students with the opportunity to achieve their potential in their areas of strength and interest. I believe that every child is gifted and has the right to have their gifts nurtured to develop into talents that will serve them with optimal impact in the future.

I am wary of gifted and talented programs because, for the most part, such initiatives tend to direct resources to developing the skills of a minority of students in a narrowly-defined view of what is valuable. Whilst I agree that our best mathematicians, scientists and linguists should be extended, I also believe that every other child deserves the same attention and opportunity, whatever their gifts may be. Only then can every child aspire to self-fulfilment and lead a happy and successful life, making a positive contribution to a society in which full employment and universal self-actualisation are the norms. Personalisation of curriculum and learning opportunities is a key innovation that we must continue to develop. This starts by recognising the teacher’s vital role, in partnership with parents, in identifying the gifts and potential of every child and ensuring those gifts are nurtured.

Of course, this assumes that all children have access to education which, tragically, is not the case. The latest statistics from UNESCO suggest that “124 million children and young adolescents, roughly between the ages of 6 and 15 years, have either never started school or have dropped out.” The quest for equality of opportunity is fundamental to the future prosperity of humankind and, having so badly missed the Millennium Goals, we will need to find new ways to ensure that every child has access to a quality education.  This will require a multi-faceted approach, involving online and blended solutions, closer collaboration between policy-makers globally, innovative infrastructure projects, hardware development and teacher training and recruitment. This is achievable. Organisations such as the Varkey Foundation are already making a difference in teacher training and Google’s Project Loon is about to bring complete Internet coverage to its first whole country, Sri Lanka, where only 1 in 5 people are currently connected. Those 124 million children may not all be learning in brick and mortar schools in the future, but there is growing cause for optimism that innovative online access solutions are being found, with the potential to transform individual life chances, the global economy and, ultimately, political stability and cooperation.

3.       Digital skills

The development of digital skills is now a non-negotiable. These skills are explicitly recognised in the UAE inspection framework and research from around the world consistently reinforces the importance of a digitally capable workforce. For example, the UK Digital Skills Taskforce Beta Edition July 2014 Interim Report suggests that well over half the workforce requires digital skills that extend beyond the basic skills of digital citizenship and that over 90% of jobs require at least those basic digital literacies. And that was last year. It has never been clearer that today’s students require at least a basic level of digital competency, in much the same way that they require basic literacy and numeracy skills – perhaps more so. Schools will need to continue to develop digital workflow skills in all students to help them become accomplished, independent and adaptable digital learners. Moreover, the data suggest that many will require a much higher level of creative competence to flourish in the digital age. 

4.       Entrepreneurship

Students are already aspiring not to become mere employees, but the entrepreneurs and employers of the future. Today’s world presents opportunities for entrepreneurs on an unprecedented scale, not least because of the wide availability of online crowdfunding for startups, such as Kickstarter. No longer is it necessary to seek funding from traditional sources to bring an innovation to market and build a business. Knowing how to do this will become a key component of school curricula in the years to come.  It is essential that schools continue to expand provision in this area, through targeted programs, authentic links with industry and integration of entrepreneurial skills within the subject-based curriculum. Youth unemployment is a major threat to economic and political stability throughout the world. Educating students to get jobs will not create the billions of new jobs that will be needed globally in the coming decades. Educating students to become confident, capable and adaptable entrepreneurs will help to solve this issue and lead to a more prosperous, peaceful future.  

5.       Saving the world

And that leads to the final, most important reason for innovation in schools today. The world is facing unprecedented challenges, including global warming, pollution, deforestation, clean energy needs, endangered species, hunger, preventable diseases, lack of safe drinking water, child exploitation, inter-cultural tension, refugee crises and fragmented, unpredictable political upheaval on a global scale.

As never before, our children will need to be able to identify problems, creating and implementing effective solutions. The difference between now and the past is that so many past innovations have not been necessary for our survival – now they are.

Cars, aeroplanes, television, computers, tumble dryers, disposable nappies (diapers, to my transatlantic friends), plastic bottles, iPads and digital music collections are all ‘nice-to-haves’ but they were never, arguably, things we needed – certainly not in terms of ensuring the very existence of our planet and species. Indeed, many have contributed to the problems we now face. Today, there is a need to innovate simply to save our planet from ourselves. Of course this will be anything but simple, but one thing is certain- the future is in the hands of our young people, our future political and business leaders, scientists, engineers, doctors and all citizens.

Right now, therefore, it is firmly in the hands of schools, teachers and parents.

The solutions to many of these problems will be technological, but many will rely on policies formed by future leaders of countries and global organisations.  The formation of such world-saving policies will require innovation, vision, creativity, courage, risk-taking and high level skills in critical thinking, diplomacy, negotiation, influencing, empathy and inter-cultural understanding, as well as the STEM skills needed to design and implement technological solutions.

One of the goals of the UAE Vision 2021 is to be among the top 20 countries by 2021 as ranked by PISA and here, once more, there is cause for optimism for educators and students. 

Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), oversees the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and has recently stated:

 “The world is certainly becoming increasingly ambiguous and volatile. But I believe people have probably always struggled with change. What is new is that the kind of things that are easy to teach and easy to test—the kind of routine cognitive skills—are also easy to digitize, automate and outsource. We find ourselves in the same situation that people with routine skills found themselves in during the Industrial Revolution. A lot of people are losing their jobs because the kind of ways we used to work and think are no longer relevant. That’s what the digital revolution does to many of the skills that are very well established in education today.

The question is: how do we respond to this? How do we equip people with the skills that are essential in the modern world? Not as an alternative to disciplinary contexts, in my view. You can teach creativity in mathematics, problem-solving in mathematics, social skills in mathematics. We need to think about what kind of skills we want to develop—and how to use established disciplines to develop these skills.

“Human beings are certainly connected in a way they have never been connected before, and I wonder if success in this day and age might require a form of empathy that hasn’t been required before. Economic success today is very much about you being able to collaborate, compete and connect with people. It requires the capacity to see the world through different lenses, to appreciate different value systems, to respect different cultures. And those people who are able to do that will find their way through this kind of world. Those people who struggle with this will see the world as threatening to them; they will see globalization as something happening to them, rather than them being part of it.”

The unprecedented influence of PISA on educational policy globally has been well-documented, so it is welcome that the assessments are evolving to encompass a far broader range of skills. Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with the approach of incorporating these skills within the existing hierarchy of traditional subjects (I prefer the more innovative curriculum model proposed by Marc Prensky), it does seem that PISA’s direction of travel has the potential to begin relieving some of the tension between traditional, archaic assessments and the need to develop a creative, relevant curriculum that truly meets the needs of all 21^st Century learners.

In the 2012 PISA round, optional tests in creative problem-solving and financial literacy were introduced in some countries. The 2015 assessments included collaborative problem-solving tasks, requiring negotiation and consensus building. We now have a strong indication that future assessments will go even further in assessing what may be recognised as ‘21^st Century Skills’ and we know that this development work is already underway.

The value of so-called ‘soft’ skills has never been greater and Schleicher’s recognition of empathy as a key skill is, again, welcome. It would be helpful to stop referring to skills such as empathy, emotional intelligence, consensus building, conflict resolution, collaboration, negotiation, etc. as ‘soft’ skills, as this invariably devalues their importance. If, as Prensky argues, we place these vital skills at the heart of our curricula – and find a way to effectively measure them – then we may begin to see that there is nothing ‘soft’ about them. They need to be an essential element of today’s educational offering on a global scale.

The goal of education in the 21^st Century must be to equip all students with the philosophies, knowledge, skills, attributes and values that will empower and inspire them to seek not only self-actualisation and personal happiness but also a common way forward for all humanity.

It is an exciting time to work in education and, now that assessment and inspection frameworks are beginning to support what teachers and schools really believe is best for their students, rather than these frameworks acting as perceived barriers to innovation and creativity, it is also a time for great optimism.

But that optimism must be accompanied by courageous action. If we don’t get education right in the 21^st Century, there may not be a 22^nd.

Phil Redhead is Senior Manager, Digital Strategy at GEMS Education

References

Baregheh, A., Rowley, J. & Sambrook, S. (2009) Towards a multidisciplinary definition of innovation, Emerald Group Publishing Limited http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sally_Sambrook/publication/41104662_Towards_a_multidisciplinary_definition_of_innovation/links/0c96051e5a3eec5628000000.pdf

Fastcoexist.com (June 2015): Sri Lanka Will Be The First Country To Deploy Google's Balloon-Based Internet

 http://www.fastcoexist.com/3049287/sri-lanka-will-be-the-first-country-to-deploy-googles-balloon-based-internet

Prensky, M. (2014) The World Needs a New Curriculum: http://marcprensky.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Prensky-5-The-World_Needs_a_New_Curriculum.pdf

Schleicher, A. (23^rd July 2015) interviewed in Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/2015/07/23/the-critical-role-of-teachers-in-transforming-education-systems/

Times Educational Supplement (7^th August 2015) https://www.tes.co.uk/news/school-news/breaking-news/sixth-formers-turn-extended-projects-win-top-university-places

UK Digital Skills Taskforce (2014) Beta Edition July 2014 Interim Report http://policy.bcs.org/sites/policy.bcs.org/files/Interim%20report.pdf

UNESCO (July 2015) POLICY PAPER 22 / FACT SHEET 31: http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/fs-31-out-of-school-children-en.pdf

United Arab Emirates School Inspection Framework 2015-16 – Not published

University of Kent:  What are the top ten skills that employers want? http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/top-ten-skills.htm [Accessed 13 August 2015]